Reclaiming the North

“Mountains never unite” Latin Proverb

 

Not since the tragic killings of Northern and Western Regional leaders in 1966 has the North been so isolated from the rest of the nation. In those dark, uncertain days, the military administration under the then Major Hasan Usman Katsina had to fall back on strong cultural and traditional structures to govern a deeply hurt people. That ominous silence and distance was not entirely assuaged by the northern-inspired counter-coup, and the killings of thousands of Igbos and other southeasterners had two clear underlying motives to it: revenge, and a popular desire for secession. There were widespread sentiments for separation of the North from Nigeria, although many members of the Northern elite including northern military officers were reluctant to acknowledge this.

 

A resurgent North under the military took up the mantle of preserving an uncomfortable union, breaking the monolith which the Northern Region was, as well as other regions, and initially going it alone in the war to stop the Biafran adventure in the light of initial Yoruba leaders’ reluctance to join the fray. Having won the war, a Northern – dominated military moved quickly to win the peace as well. But it lost the most important battle in the war of the regions. It lost the battle for sustained economic growth and development in the North. Northern leaders held the trappings of power, but had no vision. Military leaders from the region spent much of their time looking over their shoulders or fighting attempts to unseat them. Massive resources being realized from a booming oil industry were being squandered or stolen, and corruption took center stage in governance at all levels in Nigeria. Successive non-military regimes strengthened patronage as the guiding principle of governance. The Northern economy became addicted to handouts from oil revenues, and agriculture and agro-allied industries, its backbone, shriveled.

 

As its population expanded and resources became cornered  by those who wielded political power, poverty among its people actually grew. Its 19 states’ massive bureaucracies and legislatures and hundreds of Local Government Council diverted resources away from investment in education, health and infrastructure. Corruption took away what was left. Politics became the only thriving industry, and its winner-takes-all nature created large numbers of bitter and dissullusioned citizenry. Its time-tested institutions and values which held together plural and complex communities showed signs of advanced decay. Faith and ethnicity became political currencies, and communities woke up to find that a long-standing neighbour is an enemy after all. The state became too weak to mediate relations between communities in conflict, or lost legitimacy altogether because it has become a part of the problem. Citizens took their pound of flesh, literary and immediately, because they had lost faith in the capacity of the state, or traditional institutions to protect them, or get them justice.

 

In this dangerous context where the state has no credibility and little legitimacy, and without mediating mechanisms between citizen and state, anything is possible. Groups(s) now challenge the legitimacy of the Nigerian state, and wage wars against it. Political and religious leaders in the region cannot stop rampaging insurgencies, and cannot prevail on the federal government to consider their opinions. Millions of poor, alienated and angry citizens cower from bullets and bombs, and look everywhere for relief, in vain. The Muslims among them try to distance their faith from an insurgency which kills them and Christians in equal measure. Some comfort themselves with the argument that these insurgents are not Muslims, but people bent on destroying Islam and the North. Christians are angry and frightened. They cannot understand being told by virtually all Muslims that being Christian does not make them natural targets of Muslims, when every once in a while they are murdered for being just so, by people who claim to do this in the name of Islam. The deteriorating relationship between Muslim and Christian communities in Kaduna, Plateau, Nassarawa, Taraba, Adamawa and many other parts of the North is being compounded by perceptions and suspicions that every local grievance has roots in Mali, Borno or Yobe. Northern Muslims and Africans from neighbouring countries in Lagos and other cities in the south now live in fear of being picked up, detained or deported on suspicions alone. The region is burning. Its poverty is rising. The rest of the nation is trying as much as possible to put some distance between itself and the troubles in the North.

 

The nation is moving rapidly in two opposite directions. The North is regressing dangerously into anarchy and decay. The South is building with massive resources, a political framework centred around parochial foundations, and a risky assumption that the Nigerian nation may not heal soon, or at all. What highlights the gulf between the North and the rest of the country is, however, the distance between critical and popular opinion in the North and the federal government. The issue is amnesty for insurgents, a matter, it should be said, which has not been adopted or used uniformly by all its champions. In general terms, it refers to the appeal to the federal government to offer not to arrest, prosecute, persecute or intimidate any insurgents who renounce hostility and are willing to discuss their grievances with the government. The idea is derived from the experience in the Niger Delta, and is remotely informed by the belief that the offer of amnesty will trigger some substantial defection from, or even collapse of the insurgency. It assumes that insurgents want peace, and their demands are likely to be the type which can be discussed and negotiated. Amnesty here is seen as a strategic foot-in-door towards a political settlement, an alternative to the current situation in which two parties involved in the conflict are losers: citizens and their communities, and the Nigeria state which shows little evidence that it can defeat this insurgency using its current strategies. There is a winner of sorts, so far: the insurgency which, at the very least, now appears to have pitched opinion leaders and popular perception in the North against Jonathan’s administration without necessarily supporting the insurgency.

 

Just about everyone with influence and a voice in the Muslim North and even some among its Christian community, such as Bishop Kukah, have appealed to President Jonathan to consider the amnesty option. But the Jonathan administration is adamant that the option is a non-starter. Since it is in the interest of the North that this conflict is brought to an end, Northern leaders now need to move and convene an All Leaders Conference. Elders, leaders of opinion, clergy, the numerous groups and associations which dot the northern landscape, traditional rulers who can get away with the anger of their governors, governors themselves who still feel the anger of their people, should all convene a forum which should create a fresh momentum and engineer a synergy to address the security situation and examine strategies for engaging the Jonathan administration on the issue. President Jonathan’s enlightened self-interest alone should also advise him to see how far he has drifted from mainstream northern political establishment and popular perception. If he has any hope of leaning on the North politically, he needs to begin to rebuild bridges towards it. Even if he does not, he should know that defeating this insurgency will be that much more difficult with his back turned entirely against all important opinions in the North.